Naked at the lowest point on Earth?

Artist wants to photograph Dead Sea with nudes.

People have been getting naked at the Dead Sea and taking pictures of themselves
covered in sea mud for years, but never like this.

Spencer Tunick,
internationally renowned documenter of the nude figure in public, has expressed
interest in creating an installation at the Dead Sea to raise awareness of its
declining state, according to a press release sent out Sunday.

The
world-famous US artist has photographed dozens, hundreds, thousands and tens of
thousands of people in public places in the nude. Earlier this month, he
released his photos of the Sydney Opera House surrounded by over 5,000 nude
people.

Tunick is reportedly keen on coming to Israel to do an
installation around the Dead Sea to raise awareness to the fact that it is
sinking by a meter a year. If nothing is done, the Dead Sea will continue to
drop until it becomes nothing but a heavy saline mass at the bottom, scientists
predict.

The Dead Sea, which is in the running for one of the new Seven
Wonders of the World, has been the target of many a public relations campaign –
but none quite like this one.

Right now, a couple hundred thousand
dollars need to be raised to bring Tunick to Israel and finance the shoot, Gura
Berger of Leibowitz Berger Marketing, Public Relations, told The Jerusalem Post
Sunday. She said there was no specific date set yet for the
shoot.

Shlomit Yarkoni of Ben-Or, which is organizing the fundraising,
added in a statement that “Spencer Tunick has already been involved in
environmental-artistic activities with Greenpeace, and his work creates ripples
and reverberations which are the equivalent of multi-million dollar promotional
campaigns. The vast damage caused to the Dead Sea by human beings prompted
Tunick to want to put the Dead Sea on the map.

“The connection to the
naked body is natural in an area like the Dead Sea,” Yarkoni continued. “After
the funds are raised, we will worry about enlisting the people – several
thousand Israelis who will volunteer to have their picture taken.”

Tunick
has done installations in France in conjunction with Greenpeace, and
even shot
an installation of 600 nude people on the Aletsch Glacier in the Swiss
Alps to
protest global warming in 2007.

One of his biggest installations to date
involved 18,000 people in Mexico City in 2007.

There were rumors in March
that Tunick would be coming in the near future to check out potential
sites in
Tel Aviv and around the Dead Sea. At the time, his Israeli producer
Harry
Fruchter told the Post there was no truth to those rumors, after a story
appeared in Yediot Aharonot.

According to Tunick’s personal Web site, the
artist “has been documenting the live nude figure in public, with
photography
and video, since 1992. Since 1994 he has organized over 75 temporary
site-specific installations in the United States and abroad.

“Tunick’s
installations encompass dozens, hundreds or thousands of volunteers; and
his
photographs are records of these events,” the Web site continues. “The
individuals en masse, without their clothing, grouped together,
metamorphose
into a new shape. The bodies extend into and upon the landscape like a
substance.

These grouped masses which do not underscore sexuality become
abstractions that challenge or reconfigure one’s views of nudity and
privacy.

The work also refers to the complex issue of presenting art in
permanent or temporary public spaces.”

Sites Of Interest

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